If you want to achieve long-term growth as an affiliate, one of the best ways to build awareness and a community is through social media.
However, managing multiple accounts can be tricky, and as your audience grows you will simply not have the time to run your accounts manually.
Thankfully, there are plenty of social media management platforms out there. Two of the best are Hootsuite and Sprout, and we’ve provided a full comparison of both below.
Hootsuite: Pros
Hootsuite is arguably THE go-to social media management platform. It offers a comprehensive suite of tools including features to promote your content through paid advertising.
Another perk of Hootsuite is that it has a huge library of resources to help you develop your social media skills and understanding. You can find content related to the latest social media trends, along with courses and certifications to help you get better at putting your ideas into practice.
Hootsuite also allows you to integrate various customer relationship management (CRM) tools, making it easy for you to interact with your followers and deliver an excellent service to them.
Sprout: Pros
One of the platform’s biggest strengths is its comprehensive social listening features, where you can look for average engagement rates with certain terms and more.
Sprout also allows you to carry out competitive analysis that shows you what your rivals are doing well and places where you can find weak spots. Moreover, you can track individual campaigns and tweak them accordingly.
In addition to the above, Sprout has various tools designed to help you turn employees into advocates for your brand.
Hootsuite: Cons
One of Hootsuite’s main cons is that if you’re a smaller affiliate with a limited budget, the pricing might be a little out of your range, but we’ll talk more about this later.
What’s more, some users have also complained that using Hootsuite for Facebook has resulted in lower levels of reach on that particular social media network.
Another con of Hootsuite is that its comprehensive suite of tools might be difficult for beginners to learn how to use. You will eventually get there but using complicated software can be a little off-putting if you’re looking to gain momentum quickly and with limited experience.
Sprout: Cons
Like Hootsuite, Sprout Social also has its share of drawbacks. Its pricing is also quite high and especially at the lower level, meaning that you might need to increase your budget if you want to use this platform over Hootsuite.
While Sprout has a huge resource center, you could argue that it’s not as comprehensive as Hootsuite’s. This isn’t a huge problem, but it does make things a little trickier if you’re looking to expand your knowledge and don’t want to go elsewhere.
Pricing
Hootsuite has several plans. The first – Professional – costs $29 per month for one user. Team is $129 per month for three users, and Business is $599 per month for five users. Each has different limits on the number of social profiles you can link. Enterprise plan costs are tailored.
Sprout is a little more expensive, to begin with; Standard costs $89 per month if you pay annually. Professional is $149 and Advanced is $249. All of these are per user and prices are higher if you pay month-to-month.